


As Soft As Air

by impilii



Category: Original Work
Genre: Class Differences, Clothing, Cunnilingus, F/F, Knifeplay, Manipulation, Power Imbalance, Victorian Egyptomania
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:26:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24954520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impilii/pseuds/impilii
Summary: A governess gets a position with a new family. The lady of the house has dark secrets.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character, Victorian Lady With a Dark Secret/Innocent Governess Hired Under False Pretenses
Comments: 16
Kudos: 88
Collections: Nonconathon 2020





	As Soft As Air

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reine_des_corbeaux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reine_des_corbeaux/gifts).



> For reine_des_corbeaux: your prompts were really fantastic and I hope you enjoy this gift! Happy nonconathon!

The gig and driver trundled away down the long country drive as Lucie screwed up the courage to approach the massive front door of Blakewood Hall. Her hair was pinned up under her hat, her clothes as tidy as possible after two and a half days of travel. Her dress was in a plain dark wool, but neatly trimmed with ribbon—enough, hopefully, to walk the fine line of indicating that she was aware of what was fashionable without presenting the impression that she was frivolous.

The footman who admitted her was one of the handsomest men she’d ever seen, dressed impeccably from head to toe, and the enormous hall into which he led her sparkled with chandeliers. Despite her carefulness, she felt grubby and small, and smaller and grubbier with each passing minute. Down the staircase swept a tall woman in a bright, aniline blue gown, pinned up on one side to reveal a gold brocade inset. Her face was of indeterminate age, but her steps were full of vigor and her figure like something out of the latest fashion plate. 

Lucie extended Mrs. Grazebrook’s letter of introduction and tried not to wince at the visible pucker in her traveling glove where she had attempted to cover over a rip with embroidered bellflowers. “Lady Blakewood? I am Lucie Arnaud. How do you do?”

“Oh, there’s no need to stand on such ceremony!” Lady Blakewood’s voice was low but lively as she plucked the letter from Lucie’s grasp and took her by the arm. “I remember what a delight you were last winter in Pau, always a smile on your face as the children trailed after you like happy little ducks. When dear Amelia—that is, Mrs. Grazebrook—wrote that you were looking for a position, I knew it was meant to be.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Please,” she swished forward in a wave of blue silk, tugging Lucie along like a tide. “You must call me Violetta. I do hope we shall be excellent friends, you know.”

The warmth of her welcome was startling; Lucie wasn’t certain she’d even been introduced to Lady Blakewood last winter. The whirling parade of fashionable ladies entertained by Mrs. Grazebrook had swept through the drawing rooms and out onto the Boulevard des Pyrénées to take advantage of the activities of the resort town, shedding their children into the hands of governesses and nurses as easily as they handed off their coats.

“I would like that very much,” Lucie replied.

Lady Blakewood squeezed her arm and smiled, keeping up a steady chatter as they walked. “It’s been too long since I’ve had a real companion here. I’ll show you where you’ll be staying. And the schoolroom? Of course. The children? Oh, no, they aren’t here right now, or I should take you to see them directly. They’re spending a few weeks with their cousins, but they should be back any day now; perhaps tomorrow or the next.”

They passed down a long hallway stuffed with paintings and curios on pedestals: curling seashells, peculiar stone carvings and one large case of ancient-looking jewelry, finely worked in beads and bright metals. It was the sort of display that Lucie thought one could easily spend days exploring, but Lady Blakewood waved her compliments off. “I like to bring them home from my journeys—ever since I was a child on expeditions with my father—but these are trinkets, mostly. The south hallway is a much finer collection.”

They turned a corner and came to a sudden stop. “This will be your room. It’s on the family corridor since so much of the house is still shut up. I hope you don’t mind.”

As the door opened, Lucie couldn’t imagine a world in which she would mind. The room was bright, with a lovely birch writing desk and a large canopied bed, worlds away from the cramped London attic she’d spent the last three weeks sharing with her replacement at the Grazebrook’s. Her term of employment with them had been an exhausting and lonely few months which had ended suddenly and unceremoniously upon the family’s return to London.

“A _French_ governess?” the elder Mrs. Grazebrook had asked with alarm upon meeting her. Mrs. Grazebrook the younger had signaled for Lucie to usher the children out, but they all heard the squawk of “Catholic!” before the door closed.

The next day Mrs. Grazebrook had summoned her to let her know it was out of her hands. “If it were all up to me, I’d keep you on. It’s just—‘when in France’ is one thing, but people do talk, you know, and we must think of the girls’ futures. I’ll write to my friends, I’m sure one of them— well. You’ll have an excellent reference, of course.”

“Of course,” Lucie had echoed faintly, because what else was there to say when nineteen years of living in London wasn’t enough to wipe away the stereotypes that accompanied seven months of a Parisian childhood.

“And you needn’t worry about Miss Hughes; she’ll be happy to share the schoolroom with you until you’ve found another position,” Mrs. Grazebrook had added, which had turned out not quite to be the case when Lucie had met Miss Hughes.

Now, instead of a small, dark room with a woman who hated her, Lucie was in a room fit for a princess with a woman who wanted to be her friend. 

“It’s _wonderful_ ,” she said.

Her luggage, battered and dingy against the upholstery, was set on a bench at the foot of the bed by the handsome footman, who vanished again in the space of a second.

“You must be eager to settle in after all that travel.” Lady Blakewood perched on the writing desk. “But you don’t mind the company, do you? It’s been an age since I’ve had someone to properly talk to.” 

“I—don’t mind, no, Lady Blakewood.” 

“Violetta, please, Lucie.” She smiled again, a keen sort of expression that put Lucie in the mind of a friendly bird.

It would be churlish to insist upon “Miss Arnaud” at that point, Lucie thought, though she’d put her foot down if the children tried it. Her hands fluttered around the clasp of her carpet bag, and hesitantly drew out her belongings—the sheet music she had procured because she remembered that one of the Blakewood girls had been terrifically prodigious on the piano, the dresses that desperately needed a press, slightly worn undergarments that she rushed to hide from scrutiny in the tall wardrobe that dominated the corner of the room.

When she turned around, Violetta was at the side of the bed.

“Only dark dresses?” Her long fingers, gloved in pale blue kid, flitted across pleats and seams. “I can’t blame you, I suppose—everywhere you turn the advice is only to hire plain governesses. That must have been a trial for you. And what a waste!”

Lucie demurred. 

Violetta laughed. “It’s a fatal flaw of the class, my dear. As a rule, married women are much too concerned with what our husbands might be getting up to—it stunts our sense of aesthetic and adventure.” She paused and shook out Lucie’s nicest dress, one she’d remade from an old gown that her mother had worn in her glory days in the court of Louis Philippe. “This will do nicely for dinner. You and I shall dine together, of course.” 

—

Dinner was a far more luxurious affair than Lucie had been used to of late; the Grazebrooks had firmly believed that a governess should eat with her charges, so her diet had nearly entirely comprised of porridge, potatoes and mutton. Violetta introduced every course with a story—the vineyard in Spain which she’d discovered after her favorite French wine had been devastated by the Great Blight, the market in Constantinople where she’d personally haggled with a dozen merchants over the spices for the stew, the horse from Araby that she’d been riding when she shot this venison. 

The wine had gone to Lucie’s head and past it by the time they withdrew from the dining room to the parlor. She turned to introduce herself to the woman already standing in the room, and stumbled back in fright. Not a person at all, but an enormous painted sarcophagus in the Egyptian style stood at the center of the room, gold leaf flaking off in spots.

“The crown jewel of the collection,” Violetta said from right behind her. “I was just a girl, but I was there with my father when they unearthed it from the dust mound it was hidden in—some cult-priestess they think from the writings, but you wouldn’t have known it by the location.”

She looked at it with pride. “It’s quite something, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Lucie clutched for her rosary bracelet. _Ave maria…_

“That’s how I’d like to go, when I go,” Violetta added with a laugh. “With my face painted in gold on my coffin and all my favorite possessions buried with me.”

“Is there still someone… in there? One of those mummies, all wrapped up?”

She leaned in with a conspiratorial whisper. “Shall we crack it open and find out?”

Lucie’s heart dropped at the thought.

“Your face!” Violetta exclaimed. “No, of course we won’t. It’s promised to the British Museum in fact, and they’d be particularly cross.”

She dug through a basket of needlework and passed along a thin volume to Lucie.

“Be a dear and read to me,” Violetta commanded, from where she sprawled on the settee with her needlepoint. 

Lucie settled into an armchair as far as she could get from the mummy and glanced at the cover. _Antony and Cleopatra._

“Oh, that’s too far away,” Violetta complained. “It’s an illustrated version. Sit here so you can show me the pages.” She waved a pale hand at the footstool next to her couch.

“Act V, if you please. Can you do voices?” Violetta’s hands were busy with crimson thread, and her voice brooked no argument. 

Lucie sank down carefully, adjusting her skirts to the short seat. It wasn’t truly such a peculiar spot, once she got settled, and Violetta had quips and comments about all of the illustrations that made it easily one of the most interesting times she’d ever had reading Shakespeare instead of watching it. 

She was just finishing Cleopatra’s death scene when she felt a tug at her cap, pins sliding free and sending her neat plaits into a tumble. Violetta’s fingers ran gently through the tangles. “You’d look so nice with your hair all done like that. Maybe one of those headdresses with the snakes that you see on the pharaohs.” 

“Oh.” Lucie tucked her hair over one shoulder, self-conscious. “I think I’d feel rather silly.” 

Violetta tugged it back, and pushed it up her head in a messy handful. “Something like this, maybe, with the rest curled down the back. Modern-ish, but with ancient accessories.” 

That night, in the shadow of the wardrobe in her big, beautiful room, Lucie dreamed of the sarcophagus reaching out to catch her by the hair, of her limbs bound in cotton to her body and the grinding of stone above her.

—

She woke to sweaty sheets tangled around her, the sound of grinding stone still echoing through the house. She followed the noise down several hallways, to a well-lit library.

“I thought we could do better than that illustration from last night,” Violetta said, directing several bolts of cloth to one side of the room. Two footmen rumbled a heavy marble column to the left by a few inches, and a maid carried in a bowl of fruit.

“We?”

“Oh, you will pose for me, won’t you? I’d have a maid stand in, but the housekeeper tells me none of them can be spared. Since the children won’t be back until tomorrow or the next day, we’ve plenty of time, don’t you think?” 

“I suppose—“

“Excellent! I’ve picked the costume already: Cleopatra by way of Marie Antoinette.” Violetta handed over a gathered dress of fine white cotton and laughed. “Is that in poor taste? I think it’s a rather interesting comparison—one led through a hostile city to be put to death, the other choosing her own death before allowing herself to be led through a hostile city. Love and royalty and murder.”

“I—“

“Well, quick! Go get ready!”

The chemise à la reine was sheerer and lower cut than any dress in Lucie’s wardrobe, with a flounce that emphasized her bust no matter which way she sat. Above the dress, Violetta fastened a beaded torque, noting almost absently that it was thought to be three thousand years old. 

Lucie moved gingerly after that, letting Violetta pose her on the couch with the silken cords of a curtain standing in for Cleopatra’s asps: one coiled on her outstretched arm, the other resting upon her chest.

Lucie passed two afternoons that way, lying on a couch with a necklace worth more than she'd ever seen wrapped around her neck as Violetta painted and talked about her travels.

“Did you really bring back all these things yourself?” she asked. “From Egypt and all the rest of it?”

“Most of it. I suppose I feel like a trip’s not real unless you bring back something beautiful to remember it by.”

On the third day, Violetta was agitated by every attempt at conversation that addressed Lucie’s more immediate concerns—when the children would be back, where her husband was, what precisely she hoped for the children to be tutored in.

“There will be plenty of time to discuss that later. The issue at hand is the composition just isn’t dynamic enough, _dramatic_ enough. I need—” Violetta picked up a knife she had used to open a container of turpentine, came over and held it to Lucie’s chest, just where the necklace ended. 

She stared up at Violetta like a fossil trapped in amber, struck suddenly by a vision of herself dead on the sofa. In a powerful stroke, Violetta sliced open the dress down the center, cutting through the laces of Lucie’s stays as well. Lucie gasped and clutched one hand to her chest, heartbeat a rapid staccato.

“Yes, just like that,” the lady traced a finger along her bottom lip. "Are you alright, my dear?" 

Lucie felt stupid even as she said the words. "I thought you were going to cut me." 

“What an imagination you have! But keep that expression, if you can. Remember, your lover just died and your throne is lost. Your despair is so deep you can’t contain yourself; you have to rend the very clothes from your body to show how your heart is breaking.” She pulled the fabric aside from one of Lucie's breasts and rubbed her nipple, coaxing it to hardness.

Lucie breathed shakily, the pressure of someone else’s finger lingering at her mouth as Violetta walked back across the room to the easel. A bead of sweat dripped down the curve of her breast, but she didn't dare move.

"You really do make a lovely Cleopatra," Violetta sighed at the end of the day.

The painting, mostly finished, was no more scandalous than anything she'd seen in galleries. Still, Lucie felt a pit in the bottom of her stomach at the sight of herself in a sheer dress, caressed by snakes and laid out on the divan like a wanton.

“You’ve been such a good sport about all this,” Violetta said as she unhooked the necklace for Lucie. “I hate to see you climb back into those drab old dresses at the end of the day. Why don’t you pick something out?”

She indicated a rack of clothes that Lucie just two weeks ago would never have thought she’d have a chance to touch: gowns beaded with curves of semiprecious stones, or draped in lace. Yards and yards of painted silks, with thousands of iridescent beetle shells scattered down sleeves and skirts in geometric patterns.

“I couldn’t,” she said.

“Of course you can. I want you to, in fact.” 

Lucie returned to her room with an armful of gorgeous gowns that felt like ill-gotten gains. 

—

The next day dawned bright and clear. Lucie cleared her head with a walk in the garden, wrote several letters for posting, and worked on a lesson plan for the children. A return to the simpler activities she was accustomed to was just the thing for her, and her spirits were high as she joined Violetta for dinner, dressed as elegantly as Violetta seemed to expect of her dinner companions. 

“I saw you today walking today in the garden.” Her voice was clipped. 

Lucie tried to tread carefully. “I thought I’d familiarize myself so that I know where the children can play, and where I should keep them away. I didn’t recognize some of the flowers—did you bring them home as samples from your travels?”

Violetta did not lighten up one bit, despite the easy opportunity to launch into one of her favorite subjects. “I did, many of them. You looked quite out of place in those sullen rags of yours. Like a dreary blight upon the blossoms.”

Taken aback, Lucie replied. "I--I'm sorry, I didn't mean to--" She stuttered to a halt, unsure of what she'd done wrong.

"To spurn my gifts?"

“On—on a walk in the garden?”

"You don't get to pick and choose." Her fingers rapped against the table. “Take it off."

"What?"

"Everything I gave you. Take it off."

Lucie rose slowly. “I’ll go now, then…”

“Did I say you could leave?” Violetta stood and pulled her in by the collar.

The handsome footman stood by the door with a statue's unseeing eyes as Lucie looked over to him for help. 

The paisley taffeta came undone, button by button. Her skirt and petticoats dropped to the floor around her. Lucie’s tears welled up in humiliation as she was stripped down to her corset and shift. 

“Don’t cry.”

Violetta slapped her and reached for her corset laces.

Lucie wrapped her arms around herself. “It’s my corset,” she protested. “You didn’t give it to me.” 

Violetta chucked her fondly on the chin. “I gave you the laces, sweet thing,” she said. 

A sudden raging sense of unfairness made Lucie shove her. “After you sliced mine up? You don’t get to treat me like this!” 

She turned to run but her feet caught in the fabric puddled around her legs. The fall felt like it took an age.

—

Lucie regained consciousness on her own bed, dressed only in her underclothes, wrists and ankles pulled to the corners of the bed with the same ropes that had curled on her chest as snakes for three days. Smooth though they were, she couldn’t slip free, and struggle seemed only to tighten the knots. A new sob hitched in her chest.

“Are you quite finished?” 

Violetta stood at the door, her amusement matching the glint of the knife in her hand. 

“Please, let me go,” Lucie begged, eyes drawn inexorably to the blade. 

“Without learning your lesson? You’ve been terribly ungrateful,” Violetta said. “What’s to be done about that?” 

She dragged the cold tip of the knife along the arch of Lucie’s foot. It drew a line of ticklish, squirming sensation, but she didn't dare even twitch a toe. 

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I promise I’ll—“ 

The knife dug in and Lucie yelped. Violetta raised the scraps of her stocking along with an imperious eyebrow. “Fortitude, my dear. I’ve never even nicked you.” 

“Please, I’ll wear whatever you want, do whatever you say, just don’t—“

The flat of the knife stung against Lucie’s ankle, then slid up her leg to catch on the hem of her drawers. “Right now, I don’t want you in clothes at all.”

Lucie kept deadly still as her clothing fell in shreds around her: the scrape of the knife as it battled with strong-stitched seams, the roughness of fabric pulling tight against sensitive skin, the chill of the air as her body was laid bare.

Fingers slid up the insides of her thighs and spread her open. “Glistening wet. Do you have any idea what you look like?” 

Lucie could imagine it too well—worse than the painting in the library, worse than the obscene postcards she’d once confiscated from the Grazebrook cousins and burned. She shook her head and closed her eyes.

“Shameless,” Violetta said. “Except for the blush. It’s a lovely exercise in opposites.”

Her smile dipped between Lucie’s legs, tongue sliding over the apex of her cunt. 

“No!” 

A bright line of pain bloomed on her thigh and she gasped.

“If you’d rather suffer, we can paint that picture as well.” 

Violetta brought the knife down again with a smack that Lucie was certain had to have drawn blood.

“No, please,” she begged as the blade flashed into the air again. “Not the knife.”

“You don’t want to be pleased and you don’t want to be punished. What a contrary little wagtail you've turned out to be.” Violetta tapped the point of the knife against her own lips before placing it off on a side table. “Perhaps you can just make yourself useful, then.”

Anything that wasn’t the knife. Lucie nodded fervently.

In the next instant she found herself smothered in the dark as Violetta hoisted up her skirts and sat astride Lucie’s face. She rocked back and forth for an interminable age, tugging Lucie’s head this way and that and grinding down with such force that Lucie wasn’t sure whether her neck would break or her breath give out first. Her muffled shouts only seemed to encourage Violetta to clamp her legs tighter. The abyss roared in Lucie’s ears and invaded her lungs until, in desperation, she bit down on the only thing she could. 

Her hair stuck to her face as Violetta’s slaps knocked her head from side to side. 

The blows continued haphazardly down her body and settled unerringly on her cunt until she was bucking and writhing and almost managing to pull her legs together despite the ropes.

“Behave,” said Violetta, picking up the knife again. 

Lucie stilled.

“You’re really terrified of it, aren’t you?” She cooed, tracing it across Lucie’s stomach and down her thighs again.

The heavy haft of the blade pressed inside her, but the discomfort of the intrusion was nothing to the flood of fear at the knowledge of how close the edge was to all her tenderest parts.

Another smack landed squarely on her clit. She felt the knife shift, and screamed.

“Have some self-discipline, Lucie.” Violetta brushed the tears off Lucie’s cheek, then brought her gloves to her lips and breathed in deeply. Her breasts heaved with exertion and her face was flush with satisfaction. “As long as you stay still, nothing will happen.”

Another strike. And another.

She didn’t know what grace granted her the strength to remain motionless through the beating. She didn’t know how long it lasted. It might have been minutes or days that Violetta drove her along that crest of ecstatic cruelty. Her body was locked in paralysis, and her mind along with it until she came to in an empty tub. 

Violetta spoke about nothing in particular as she sponged Lucie down with warm water. 

“Why,” she croaked. 

“There you are.” Violetta caressed her face. “That lovely, obedient girl I met in France. When I saw you, I just knew you were the keepsake I wanted…”

Lucie was urged back to the bed on shaking legs where Violetta tied her up once more, wrists crossed over her head.

“Rest. Tomorrow you’ll dress properly,” Violetta said, smoothing a blanket over her. “We can take a walk in the garden together, or look at the rest of the collection. Perhaps start a new play.”

“Tomorrow,” Lucie responded faintly. That jogged something in her memory. “When the children get here.”

There was a long, long pause. “Yes, the children, of course. Tomorrow, or the day after.”

The door swung shut and the darkness of the night to come and the days to follow settled in around her with the weight of a tomb. 

“With thy sharp teeth…” she muttered, yanking at her wrists, and set herself steadily to the task. 

—

Hours later found her softly swinging a door down the hall.

In one hand, the rope. 

In the other, the knife. 

Lucie stood, testing the weight of them, and stared at Violetta’s sleeping face, painted in gold by the dim firelight.


End file.
